Now that the castle's looking pretty good, I want to add a dusky sky and some…erupting volcanoes in the background. To do that, I want to create a special…custom cloud brush. So, let's open up that document we used…before to create the previous custom shapes.…Let's turn off those previous shapes and create a new layer.…To start this, pick a soft round brush shape from the brush panel.…I want to build a custom brush for painting clouds and you might think that…painting a very elaborate cloud shape, something like the clouds on the Columbia…pictures logo of a robed woman holding up a torch would work best, but actually a…much different brush shape would work better.…

Let me show you why. Here I'm quickly painting an elaborate…cloud bank with lots of detail. This may look a little strange, since you…need to paint your cloud shape in black. That's because when defining a custom…brush, the black areas will be the paintable shapes.…If you find this awkward, you can always paint white clouds on a black background…

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7/29/2013

Learn to create new worlds, both fanciful and totally realistic, in our series on digital matte painting in Adobe Photoshop with David Mattingly, a matte artist for many groundbreaking motion pictures such as Tron and I, Robot. In this installment, he shows you how to set up your palettes and workspace, tone the underlying plate, create silhouettes in your background, and paint in light and other details. Plus, learn to paint waterfalls, smoke, and other elements that make for fascinating movie backdrops.